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Electrolytic capacitors are closer to batteries than to non-polarized capacitors. Lithium-ion cells in capacitor housings also exist, presumably to evade tariffs and restrictions involved in shipping batteries.
Upvoted because this is true. I knew that information so I can confirm it. I swear I did.
Electrolytic capacitors use the chemistry to make a very high dielectric allowing the plates to get very close and increase the capacitance and decrease the size.
A cell in a battery is a capacitor then converts the charge on the plates into chemical energy and vice versa allowing much more energy storage and a flat operating range as the plates charge is replenished by the chemical reaction.
This article doesn't go into details but it sounds like the breakthrough is a much better dialectic then storing energy in a chemical reaction.
I wonder why I even read these articles. If these do turn out to be useful it will eventually make its way into technologies I use or buy near me. I don't have to hunt them out.
Serious question: How is this different than all the other sensationalized headlines about some technology that's gonna change everything, and then you later hear nothing about it?
They are all calling for investors just to figure out it doesn't scale.
That's my assumption at least
This one features the number 19.
So specific.
It's just two years away!!
So it will get here with fusion, flying cars, hydrogen cars, and jetpacks?
There have been constant news articles coming out over the past few years claiming the next big thing in supercapacitor and battery technologies. Very few actually turn out to work practically.
The most exciting things to happen in the last few years (from an average citizen's perspective) are the wider availability of sodium ion batteries (I believe some power tools ship with them now?), the continued testing of liquid flow batteries (endless trials starting with the claim that they might be more economic) and the reduction in costs of lithium-ion solid state batteries (probably due to the economics of electric car demand).
FWIW the distinction between capacitors and batteries gets blurred in the supercapacitor realm. Many of the items sold or researched are blends of chemical ("battery") and electrostatic ("capacitor") energy storage. The headline of this particular pushes the misconception that these concepts can't mix.
My university login no longer works so I can't get a copy of the paper itself :( But from the abstract it looks first stage, far from getting excited about:
This precise control over relaxation time holds promise for a wide array of applications and has the potential to accelerate the development of highly efficient energy storage systems.
"holds promise" and "has the potential" are not miscible with "May Be the Beginning of the End for Batteries".
There have been constant news articles coming out over the past few years claiming the next big thing in supercapacitor and battery technologies.
More like decades. Anyone remembers buckyballs and buckytubes? What happened to that?
Nanotubes are still a thing, but most of the hype now seems to be around 'buckysheets' (graphene)
There’s an old saying: “Graphene is so versatile it can do anything except leave the laboratory”.
I've been seeing a lot about Sodium-ion just in the past week.
While they seem to have a huge advantage in being able to charge and discharge at some fairly eye-watering rates, the miserable energy density would seem to limit them to stationary applications, at least for now.
Perfect for backup power, load shifting, and other power-grid-tied applications though.
I thought one of the main advantages of sodium-ion batteries was price? Great for the applications you listed
I'm doing research on high energy density Na-ion batteries. We'll get there eventually
There are already cars with this technology (one of the cheap Chinese ones)
Yup. How long have we been waiting for graphene batteries to revolutionize technology? About a decade now?
|My university login no longer works so I can't get a copy of the paper itself :(
Scihub my brother 🙏
Sadly Sci-Hub has not received updated articles in several years. Alexandra is waiting for the outcome of the trial in India. I don't think it depends on what the outcome is, just that the trial needs to be over.
I wouldn't know, but it's totally not on there, or so I've been told.
Headline is dumb. If capacitors are better at being batteries than batteries are, they just become the next generation of batteries.
Capacitors can theoretically charge MUCH faster.
However the galvanic potential of lithium is as large as is practically possible. The galvanic potential is what really matters for a battery. Capacitors are nowhere near the joules per weight/volume.
Headline is not dumb. There are reasons to make a distinction between the two, the most salient one being that capacitors are several orders of magnitude faster to charge and discharge.
But capacitors aren’t batteries. Batteries store chemical energy. Capacitors store electrical potential energy. Electronically they behave much differently.
Only for certain types of capacitors. In practice they can overlap quite a bit, especially with common aluminium electrolytic capacitors (these form & dissolve complex aluminium oxide & hydroxide layers on the plates).
Yes they do… including not holding a charge when the differential drops too far.
The real wins are in battery-backed capacitors. Charge the caps fast, then let them keep the batteries topped up.
That's what I do being off-grid. I have my battery bank then a series of Supercaps to essentially act as an on/off ramp//drawbridge and temper quick demands. Kinda like an inverse soft starter so this is suuuuper interesting to me.
Boom?
Material science has just been crushing it for a good long minute now.
That's why we name our ages after the materials within. Material science is the foundation for almost all other physical sciences.
How do you account for Space age and Information age?
We're currently in the information age, which is due to silicon. In a few hundred years, this time may reasonably be called the silicon age. Society has only recently transferred to the silicon age from the previous iron age. If we don't cause a total collapse of our society, then we will be in the silicon age for a few hundred more years, and that will likely include space colonization.
The space age you're referring to is likely the 60s, when space exploration was beginning. A decade or two isn't long enough to be considered an age.
I thought it was atomic age and information age...
Or was that just empire earth...
the information age is easy: the silicon age!
not sure about the space age...maybe titanium age? that's about the time we figured out how to machine titanium on large scales, and for highly specialized, extreme applications (talking about the SR-71 here, mostly). could also call it the alloy age, since a number of important alloys were discovered around that time
There are materials possible that will completely change the world.
Theres probably a room temperature superconductor for example.
The number of possibilities is effectively infinite though, since its not just which atoms, but also how they're arranged.
Theres probably a room temperature superconductor for example.
I thought that one was a no go? Did I miss more news?
I think they mean hypothetically.
There was one team fairly recently that thought they had developed one that got a lot of press, but it turned out to not be true.
But that was only for that one specific case, it didn't prove that room temperature superconductors can't exist in general, there are still other teams working on developing them, and theoretically they could be possible, we just haven't quite worked out what materials will exhibit superconductivity at room temperature, under what circumstances, and how to make them.
And we have some materials that come pretty damn close, Lanthanum decahydride can exhibit superconductivity at temperatures just a few degrees colder than some home freezers can manage (although at very high pressures)
As in, one probably exists but has not been discovered yet. Every year scientists get them running closer and closer to room temperature
Hell yeah that's freaking awesome
I hope to see these become popular someday and with that kind of increase they're likely to get a shit ton of funding
It’s not what the article says. Still interesting application of mixed 2D/3D technologies. Always hopeful that these energy developments leave the lab though.
Ha, exactly. We've seen the "start of the end" of batteries for decades now.
It's only a few years away!